Sustainable Rehabilitation in Urban Environment: Towards a Wise(r) Urbanism

In recent contemporary urban development theory and practice, many different concepts of urban development have been proposed by different authors. While some of the concepts, such as New Urbanism, ReUrbanism, Post Urbanism and Everyday Urbanism, refer to the planning and urban design perspective, others, such as U-City, Smart City and Platform Urbanism, have a technological component based on ICT state of the art. This paper discusses a selection of contemporary paradigmatic concepts relevant to the sustainable rehabilitation of the urban environment. Special emphasis is placed on the social aspect of sustainability as an indispensable, all-encompassing means of respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms in urban development, and improving the quality of life in the city. The introduction of the theme of wisdom and wise(r) urbanism calls for a more critical evaluation and further development of individual urban development concepts and their possible hybridizations.